In this video, anti-violence activists Kiyomi Fujikawa and Shannon Perez-Darby ask and explore: What does it look like to be accountable to survivors without exiling or disposing those who do harm?

This video–the first of four–presents a bold discussion of harm, needs and accountability in social justice communities. While it doesn’t use the term restorative justice, it brings a restorative lens to the question of responding to harm by creating supportive spaces for those who do harm to others to “knock it off” and take accountability for the impacts of their actions on others.

Some highlights…

What do we do with people who do harm… rape people… batter people, who do those kinds of harms to other people? The criminal justice system is battering our communities, crushing our communities, and people are hungry for other mechanism for… someone has done harm, and

How do you reasonably ask that person to be responsible for that harm, without putting them into a system that is crushing them and their communities?

Accountability is one tool for figuring out: If you do something that’s outside your values… harmful to other humans, what do you do about that?

What are reasonable, proportionate consequences for people who do harm?

There’s no batterers’ island where you can send people who do harm, and you don’t have to think about them

When you kick people who’ve battered or assaulted out of your communities, they go to other communities

As communities, we have to be coming up with solutions and ways to support people who are doing harm, and how to knock it off and take responsibility for the harm they’ve done?

What would be reasonable and appropriate consequences for people who do harm, short of kicking people out, being our primary tool?

Also asked: what are accountable communities?

Shifting the focus from community accountability… to creating environments where it’s possible to be accountable

What am I going to do to support my community to have what we need to accountability a robust viable option for people?

How could we create a space to allow those people to genuinely take responsibility for the harm they’ve done and have a reasonable consequence?

What can people do that is proportional and right-sized?

Online programming note:

On October 26, 2018, Kiyomi and Shannon engage in an online discussion exploring models of building accountable communities. This conversation will be framed by audience questions and moderated by Mariame Kaba. Learn more about the event, join the conversation, and watch the full series of videos at on the event page.

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